Saturday, January 14, 2017

My morning walk took me to the Mill Pond dam, where water from the pond poured in torrents over the stone edge, crashing onto the rocks below - a death drop for anything other than water and slippery fish. As I stood and watched, the water leapt up and hurried downstream. Always the same rocks, never the same water, I thought, watching as the current hustled masses of bubbles past the banks.

There was one spot where the current split, where some water turned right while the rest maneuvered to the left and back into the main stream. The water that took a right turn spread slowly into a side pool where it fanned out to the very edges of the bowl and stilled almost to a full stop, waiting to add itself to the ice that formed in the cold. My thoughts, which had tangled themselves into ugly knots overnight smoothed out and I began to see what the brook could teach me.

What seems like a precipice is also a jumping off point. What seems like certain death is merely a transformation. Water doesn't die when it hits the rocks, but it does change form momentarily, becoming great masses of bubbly foam. It might seem dangerous to be in the strong central current but that's where the movement and the action are, right in the thick of things. Where the water slows and stills, ice forms, trapping movement.

Some of the water, I noticed, did not succumb to the pull of the edge but re-entered the current. Bubble after bubble refused to cease moving and returned to the fray, jostling for a new position in the rushing stream. Anthropomorphized, those bubbles gave me insight into my own possible paths - be part of the turbulent current, slow down and seek an alternate route, ignore the pull and find a place to freeze.